ABOUT THIS ALBUM

Album Notes

This album is the duration of a single night. People break up, protests against the heterosexist majority happen, there's sex, someone gets HIV, someone dies, there's a burning of an effigy and at the end we all go home. I wanted to tackle the inter-relationships that happen between individuals in the queer community with this one, while at the same time never forgetting that our sexuality is not the only thing that determines our worth. We are more than people who sleep with people of the same sex, or different sexes (some at the same time). We are more than our genders; we are more than our emotions; we are more than our relationships; we are more than our breakups; we are more than what society in large makes us out to be; we are more than government statistics; we are more than individuals; we are more than collecives. I don't know exactly what we are, but I know we are more than this.

Oz is the 2nd in a trilogy of albums. The first "Yellowbrick" was the journey into coming of age found here: www.cdbaby.com/ennio3 ; the second is "Oz", which is being of age; and the last is Kansas (still a work in progress).

This album is dedicated to the numerous queer activists who have struggled to abolish the subordination of the queer community so that individuals within this community can live without fear of persecution of mind, emotion, spirit and physical self. Equity is key. Although I sing from a predominantly queer male perspective, I encourage and invite all to infer their own personal experiences.

The follow-up to Yellowbrick, Oz takes us on a sonic journey past the yellow brick road towards the Emerald City where we witness events and interactions over the course of a night. With guitars springing to life on the opener "My Favourite Place", you know you are in for a wild ride. Ennio holds nothing back on this album. He brings to light topics which go beyond the importance of us as mere individuals, but us as a community and as a whole. The songs touch upon socially relevant topics such as HIV/AIDS on "Trapped & Trying" and "To, Fear", and the debate on gay marriage on "All We Are Is Filth." Ennio manages to showcase his abilities at storytelling and songcraft, keeping the listener enthralled with his heartfelt lyrics and emotive voice. Give Oz a listen. It'll surely make you think.

As much as I enjoyed "Weird Toes", I'm glad to see Ennio returning to the Wizard of Oz-themed trilogy with "Oz". Each song rings with a array of eclectic invoking production that encompasses the life of queer individuals. "Effigy" is the perfect anthem to a society crumbling and ultimately unfulfilling.

If Enio Chiola’s Oz were a true city, it would have to be the French Quarter of New Orleans: alluring and enticing, yet risky and treacherous. Each piece constitutes a different street scene of an old city whose decorative façades are pitted with age and violated with grim. We are familiar with these city scenes; brutal honesty yet intimate beauty. Enio weaves a textured melody whose composition is more than the sum parts: seductive melodies, laced with edgy lyrics and a meta-language where the poet’s utterance is enhanced by the melodious temperament that each word can possess.

A stroll down Bourbon Street will show you that “all we are is filth.” Around the corner you will see the striking Mulatto drag queens in their “pink (chiffon) dresses.” “You’ve dug your own grave” in Cemetery No. 1, a very dangerous place to be after dark. The crying angel in “Trapped & Trying” screams out “you’re not a man of God.” How appropriate in a city where many corrupt souls have lost their way. “Let me stay with you.” – the last whisper of a denizen in a hidden alley. Yet despite the “lonely nights,” this city, le Quartier français, is still “my favourite place.”

Though this album is ostensibly about the queer community, it speaks out for all of our humanity. How we struggle to make ourselves known, to seek comfort and happiness in others and, in so doing, how we crush those who get in our way of our self-fulfillment.

In the end, what makes this album worth buying? It’s a complete album which provides a full narrative: stories which can be pieced together. It is an innovative composition brought to life with Enio’s heart-felt vocals. He adds musical texture to each song without any piece being overworked or contrived. All genuine and honest. Sincerely, you won’t be disappointed.

This album is simply fantabulous! It covers a broad range of emotions and musical styles (sometimes even within individual songs, such as in "All we are is Filth"), yet it still flows very cohesively. Ennio experiments with many different instruments on this record, and does so very splendidly (I thoroughly enjoyed the use of accordion). All of the songs are excellent, but the ones that stood out the most for me are: "Trapped and Trying", "Maybe", "My Favourite Place", "Effigy", "Let Me Stay With You", "To, Fear", and "Ophelie en Tombee de Nuit" (wow, that's about half the album - see, it's definitely worth buying!). This has now become one of my favourite CDs, and I can't wait to hear more of the ingeniousness of Ennio!

The sojourner of Ennio’s OZ is no doe-eyed Dorothy; he travels alone, and with some harsh words for the man behind the curtain.

Longing for a place to call home as much as he is suspicious of it, the lyrics are plaintive, violently honest and frequently heart-breaking (“who can love / such a deviant?” one track climaxes in haunting despair like an electric, Gregorian nightmare). The instrumentation varies from the gentle acoustics of the artist’s guitar to the frenzied crescendo of an apoplectic howl (and at one point what sounds suspiciously like a wan accordion behind one of the cd’s more delicate melodies).

Images of isolation and abandonment, desperate cries to stay and bitter tears at being left, are the thematic refrain of nearly every track, and make the cd a study in sorrow. Even its moments of jaunty abandonment such as “Pink dresses in the fall” (or “Effigy,” which I find myself humming in the shower) represent a defiant decision to live with the scars familiar to anyone who’s been in love and anyone who’s known the pain of being the minority, the forgotten, and the hated. The rage of “All we are is filth” is a symptom of the same sense of transience that tries (and interestingly, seem to fail) to out-sing the bellowing, sampled voice of a woman screaming “you are not a man of God!” on “Trapped and Trying.” The album is, in some ways, about being queer, but, hovering somewhere between self-discovery, self-confession, and self-acceptance, it is beyond a mere exploration of queerness, and its themes, joyfully and tragically, are universal ones. Despite this, the cd manages to be profoundly personal, and its intimate, quiet performance has an arresting, shiver-inducing vulnerability.

The final track, by far the most powerful in a collection of excellent ones, crows “I have caught on to you” and vows “I will be happy now” even as it longs for a home it has made us deeply suspicious is even out there to be found. “There’s no place like home” reads not as the sudden joyous discovery of a displaced Kansas farmgirl, but as the sad, painful truth the traveller has known all along.

I didn’t realize until discovering CDbaby that this was meant as second in a trilogy; it certainly manages to stand alone, although it makes me deeply curious about earlier forays and highly expectant of new ones. Easily one of the best cds I’ve heard this year.

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